Fractured memories of a deadly encounter

Independent Mail file photo
Members of the Anderson police department search for evidence in connection with the death of Seth Barton Foster along the train tracks that run under Main Street in downtown Anderson.

Anderson Independent Mail

ANDERSON COUNTY - Accused killer Leslie Sandoval says he can't remember much about a drinking spree in January that left his homeless friend Seth Foster dead and dismembered under a vacant downtown building.

"It is like a jigsaw puzzle and I can't put all of the pieces together," said Sandoval during an exclusive jailhouse interview with the Independent Mail. "I am still putting pieces together today."

Anderson police arrested Sandoval on Feb. 25 and charged with him murder and possession of a weapon in a violent crime.

He was apprehended at a rural Abbeville County home two days after investigators discovered Foster's decomposing torso in the crawl space of an abandoned building in downtown Anderson. The 53-year-old victim's head, hands and right foot were recovered from under a nearby building.

Sandoval said he may reveal the location of Foster's left foot, which police haven't found, if Solicitor Chrissy Adams is willing to bargain with him.

"Depends on what kind of deal she wants to make," he said.

Sandoval, who turned 45 last month, is being held without bail at the Anderson County Detention Center.

During last week's unsupervised interview at the jail, the lean, 5-foot-6 Utah native talked about his troubled childhood. He also recounted his days as an amateur boxer and years spent drifting from state to state while struggling with a drinking problem before he arrived in Anderson.

Wearing an orange jumpsuit a couple of sizes too large, Sandoval answered questions in a small room with a glass partition and a single door. He couldn't seem to stand still for more than a second or two. Occasionally clenching his hands into fists, he paced like a fighter circling in the ring.

But years of hard living have left Sandoval looking tired and worn. He says he's had head injuries from boxing. He's balding, wears his remaining black hair to his shoulders and has a thin beard. He is missing a few teeth, and the rest appear grimy. He kept scratching his thighs during the interview.

Moments after complaining that the criminal case against him is riddled with holes, Sandoval said he doesn't care if he receives the death penalty.

"It don't really make no difference at this stage," he said.

'Raised by the system'

Sandoval said his father was a violent alcoholic who beat his mother. He also said that his parents and nine siblings were separated from one another when he was around 6.

"I was abandoned," Sandoval said. "They found me in the closet."

After spending three years in the pediatric unit of a Utah state psychiatric hospital, Sandoval said, he grew up in a series of foster homes.

"I didn't get along with people," said Sandoval, adding that he was "raised by the system."

"I don't even remember my mother," he added.

Sandoval said his life's happiest moments happened at Pine View High School in St. George, Utah, where he set track records in the 800-meter, 1,500-meter and 3,200-meter distance races.

According to Sandoval, a turning point came a few years after high school when he was living in Kanab, Utah. The small town near the Arizona border is best known as the location where movies such as "Planet of the Apes" and "Stagecoach" were filmed.

He was preparing to become a professional boxer. But when he lost his job as a cook, Sandoval said, he started abusing alcohol.

Sandoval, a bachelor and self-professed fan of books and movies about serial killers, said he eventually wound up serving time in a Utah penitentiary for a string of crimes that included five burglaries and a number of thefts.

Following his release, he moved to Nevada.

"I spent four years in Las Vegas," he said. "I've been in Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Montana — I've been everywhere out West with the exception of Oregon and Washington."

After living in Detroit for three years, Sandoval came to Christian Brothers Ministry near Lake Marion.

Some of his memories from that period are muddled.

"I can't remember what it was, but somehow I ended up at the Greenville hospital," he said. Sandoval said he spent three weeks at the hospital and then enrolled in a Salvation Army program in Anderson in 2008.

The Electric City was meant to be just another stop along the road for Sandoval.

"I was getting ready to go to Florida," he said. He also had hoped to travel to Spain, his ancestral homeland.

But instead he stayed in the Upstate, splitting time between Anderson and the home of his friend Deloria Airline near Due West.

"I couldn't get enough stuff together to get up out of here," Sandoval said.

Dark Clouds

Before his arrest on the murder charge, Sandoval had a few minor brushes with the law in Anderson. He pleaded guilty to a driving under the influence charge in 2008 and served 125 days in the county jail for a check forgery charge in 2010.

Deloria Airline said she got to know Sandoval after he met her son while they were inmates at the Anderson County Detention Center.

Sandoval often spent weekends at her home, said the 52-year-old Airline. She said he would mow neighbors' yards and accompany her family to church.

Airline described Sandoval as a kind man, but she said he was a "big-time drinker" who suffered from depression and other "mental issues."

In the weeks before his arrest, Airline said Sandoval told her that he was hearing voices and seeing dark clouds inside the abandoned building where he was staying on West Earle Street in Anderson.

"There was a prior murder in that building," said Sandoval, referring to the July 2010 beating death of a 46-year-old homeless man named Steven Ross Hughes. "I was scared."

He said he knew the homeless man who pleaded guilty to murdering Hughes. Andy Steve Roach, 46, was sentenced last month to 20 years in prison for the crime.

Sandoval also said he knew Mark Napier Kirby, another homeless man who was beaten to death two years ago in the woods near the Walmart store on the S.C. 28 Bypass west of Anderson.

After Sandoval was arrested, he said, an Anderson County sheriff's detective questioned him about Kirby's death. Sandoval said he knew nothing about the case.

Foster's Final Months

Seth Foster spent part of his childhood living on Broadway Lake in Anderson County. He moved back to the area in February 2011, according to his mother, Marie Whitney.

Belton police responded to two domestic disputes involving Foster and a woman at the apartment where they were living in April and June 2011.

By January 2012, Foster was homeless and drinking again. He told his family that he was staying in a vacant building that had mattresses and warm blankets. It was the same building where Sandoval was staying.

Sandoval said he sought to help Foster stop drinking but it backfired.

"Trying to help him got me back on it," he said. "By no means was he a bad person, but he had some serious issues."

Sandoval said he and Foster went on a drinking spree from Jan. 14 to 16.

Anderson County Coroner Greg Shore listed Foster's date of death as Jan. 15. The cause of death was classified as blunt force trauma, though Shore is still waiting for Foster's final autopsy report. The report has been delayed because toxicology tests have not come back from a state lab.

Sandoval stressed that he is still confused about what precisely happened between him and Foster.

"I don't know the reasons behind everything. See I can't say this happened for this reason and this happened for this reason. If could put things together, I would," he said. "If you feel like everything is closing in around you, you feel like everyone is watching you — what are you supposed to do?"

He insisted, however, that Shore is wrong about how Foster died.

"There was no blunt trauma done to him," he said. "That didn't happen to him."

Back Behind Bars

Anderson city public works employees called police on Feb. 22 after they noticed a foul odor coming from the building on West Earle Street that formerly housed the Yellow Cab Co. Investigators soon found Foster's dismembered body under the structure.

Two days later, Airline said, she took Sandoval to see a psychiatrist in Anderson so he could complete a disability evaluation.

"I was trying to help him get off the streets," she said.

Airline said Sandoval seemed out of sorts that day.

"He said he had something on his mind," she recalled. "He kept on apologizing to me."

Later that night, Anderson police showed up at her home and placed Sandoval in custody.

According to an arrest warrant, Sandoval strangled Foster and then cut off his hands, feet and head. It was the first dismemberment in Anderson County that authorities can recall.

The warrant said Sandoval "has given a written statement admitting" to the crime. A police spokesman said that investigators had recovered the knife that was used.

Sandoval disputed several of the assertions made by police.

"I didn't write no confession," he said. "I didn't give them no weapon — where is it at?"

Sandoval said the murder charge is unwarranted because police have not determined a motive for the crime.

"They know they screwed up," he said.

He expressed dissatisfaction with the legal representation that he has received from the public defender's office, referring to its lawyers as "clowns."

No date has been set for Sandoval's trial.

According to Sandoval, he is taking Depakote, a prescription medication for bipolar disorder.

He said he is being held alone in a cell at the detention center.

"It doesn't bother me," he said. "I did five-and-a-half years in maximum security, so it doesn't bother me."